Joliet Mom Cleared In Son's Fatal Scalding

Will County authorities said Wednesday that the April death of a year-old infant, initially ruled a homicide, was accidental and that murder charges will not be filed.

The decision not to prosecute Sarah Fox, 35, of Joliet, for the death of her son, Keeyan Pinnick, was made by the state's attorney's office after getting investigation reports from the sheriff's police.

On April 2, a day before his first birthday, Keeyan was scalded in the family bathtub. He died of his injuries 10 days later at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

Because the infant died in Cook County, the autopsy was performed by the Cook County medical examiner's office, which ruled the death a homicide.

According to Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Mitra Kalelkar, who performed the autopsy, scalding burns covered 37 percent of the boy's body, from the waist down. She described the injuries as a "classic case of immersion burns."

Will County Assistant State's Atty. Charles Bretz said the probe by Sheriff's Investigator Joseph Farmer cleared the mother and focused on her two other children, who may have been responsible for the injuries.

"We think it's just a case of something going wrong in a `Let's help mommy' situation," Bretz said.

In a letter of explanation written to sheriff's police last week, Kalelkar said, "The manner in which this incident occurred was definitely homicide," but she acknowledged that Keeyan's siblings, and not his mother, may have caused the burns.

At the time of the incident, Fox told police she was in another room of her home in an unincorporated area east of Joliet while Keeyan and two of his siblings were in the bathroom.

The boy's father, Elliott Pinnick, who did not live in the home, said Fox called him minutes after the incident and, when he arrived, she was in tears. "She said she was rushing him to the hospital because he got burned," Pinnick said.

Fox, the mother of six children, was never charged, but when the infant's death was reported as a homicide, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services took the surviving siblings from her care and placed them in foster homes.

On Wednesday, Fox said she didn't want to discuss the future of her other children, but she said she felt relieved that she would not be charged with murder.

"I knew I never did anything wrong," she said. "I felt bad that

the state thinks I would try something to hurt my child."

Fox also criticized newspaper accounts of the case, including the Tribune's listing of Keeyan as the 13th child under age 15 to be slain in the Chicago area this year.

"When it first happened, I was treated like a statistic," she said. "They think people have no feelings."

According to Deputy Police Chief Sig Hejmvick, Farmer used a "mock" bathroom and a sandbag that weighed as much as the infant to find out if any of the children were capable of scalding him accidentally.

"One of the children first denied it, but then both finally admitted what we suspected," Hejmvick said. He said the children apparently wanted to help their mother, who told them they could go shopping "as soon as the baby has a bath."

Kalelkar agreed with Farmer's findings.

"I am of the opinion that the older siblings could have immersed Keeyan in a tub of hot water in preparation for his bath," she wrote in her letter.